Get ready for some seriously awesome transformative art works and avant garde film footage! For a taste of how weird this week is gonna get: Klaus von Nichtssagend becomes a pond, the Bruce High Quality Foundation does “CATS,” and there’ll be footage of the Tompkins Square Park riot at the New Museum. Plus, a whole lot of C. Spencer Yeh.

In a remarkable case of irony, the NYPD has attempted to censor an art installation about free speech. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s upcoming Park Avenue tunnel installation, Voice Tunnel is an open platform, allowing anyone to say whatever they want through an intercom that will translate the noise into waves of light and sound. The NYPD, however, wanted to include a 6-second delay, in case they needed to censor anything dangerous. They compromised: a monitor will stand by as people speak, and, in case of anything really incendiary, there is a button to delete the recording.

This is a uniquely appropriate issue for Lozano-Hemmer, whose work often concerns free speech and monitoring the public.

The artist talks with us about how he feels about the intervention, and what the censorship will look like.

Leading up to the release of “The Shining” sequel, the Times has done an exhaustive profile on Stephen King’s family, all of them, prolific writers. [New York Times]

“This “modern global exchange” is what we critics like to call a “restaurant.” That’s New York Times food critic Pete Wells, tearing PRspeak a new asshole. The food at ABC Cocina actually sounds very good. [New York Times]

French porcelain manufacturer Bernardaud issued some awesome special edition dinnerware by big name artists like Jeff Koons and David Lynch, because who doesn’t want to eat off a $380 naked lady? [ARTnews]

Who says the aristocracy is dead? Viscount Allendale and his wife visited the National Gallery of Art to see a hundred million dollar painting once owned by his great-great-grandfather, but sold for petty cash. It’s okay, though. They still have a Rembrandt. [Washington Post]

Charles Isherwood was intrigued but exhausted by the bizarre, international smorgasbord of theater offered at the Lincoln Center Festival, which ended last weekend. [New York Times]

A wise choice: Jack Goldstein’s “The Jump” is coming to a Times Square billboard in August. [ARTInfo]

Ben Sutton reports that a sketch artist who drew the Manning case is selling her drawings to help cover Manning’s legal fees. As we found out yesterday, Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, but on several counts of espionage and theft, enough to put him in prison for up to 130 years. [ARTInfo]

Update! On Monday, we brought you Tré Reising, a grad student who’s been making giant sculptures for rappers, which they then put in their videos. As promised, his tribute sculpture to RiFF RaFF made it in the backdrop of this Paper Mag story (second image down). Success. [Paper Mag]

Jay Z’s performance art debut will premiere on HBO. In the words of Seth Meyers, what could possibly go right? [Rolling Stone]

More Jay Z news. A group of activists known as the Dream Defenders are occupying the capitol building in Tallahassee Florida without Jay Z until the legislature reviews the “Stand Your Ground” law. The law affected the controversial Zimmerman verdict last week. Long time activist Harry Belafonte has joined the cause, and has called out Jay Z for his lack of support. “I would be hard pressed to tell Mr Jay Z what to do with his time and his fortune. I can only be critical of what he is not doing.” Jay Z, in response, told Belafonte that his “presence is charity.” [MSNBC via Heart as Arena]

The real art for the fake movie made by the real CIA operation that inspired the movie Argo is up for auction. [Wired]

Caroline Criado-Perez recently made headlines for finally winning her fight to have prominent women represented on Britain’s bank notes last week. Now she’s taking on Twitter over their apparent inaction in dealing with threats of sexual abuse. [The Independent]

Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center benefit attracted the Hamptons elite and Lady Gaga. And there were a lot of naked ladies. And $1000 meals. [Wall Street Journal]

In another Hamptons benefit, Russell Simmons raised $1.5 million for art programs, auctioning off such fare as “Lunch with Sarah Jessica Parker in New York City,” “Meet LL COOL J & Receive 4 VIP Tickets to the concert of your choice,” and “Enjoy a walk-on role in an upcoming Tyler Perry Production.” [Huffington Post]

In 1926 a Massachusetts professor wrote that he dreamt of “Pictorial organization. The place of subject matter…Fashionable aesthetics: fetish and taboo. Painting and modern life. The Future.” Christopher Shea sources the advent of contemporary art to an extraordinary 1920s seminar at Wellesley College by Alfred Barr. [The Boston Globe]

The Park Avenue Tunnel will reopen to pedestrians this Saturday for an artwork by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer that will remind us all of our mortality. [The New York Times]

Rhizome’s Seven on Seven is, by definition, a crap shoot. The conference runs with the basic premise that by pairing seven technologists with seven artists and sticking them in a room together for 24 hours, a few creative sparks might fly. The following day, Rhizome hosts a six hour long conference in which the pairs are given 30 minutes each to present their collaborative work. The results are predictably mixed. Some projects fail, many have potential, but almost none amount to anything at all. Acknowledging this, Seven on Seven Moderator John Michael Boling quickly conceded during his opening remarks that “the main deliverable here is conversation.”